1/19/21

Rassle Inn #13


I won't ramble for long, but a thought occurred to me the other day.  Where are we going?  When the tentacles of cross-promotional hostilities first revealed themselves, it was an exciting prospect.  Kenny Omega on Impact?  The Good Brothers on Dynamite?  Think of the possibilities.  AEW's stacked tag team division stands only to be bolstered.  Critics bemoan an admittedly anemic women's division, but the Knockouts offer a megacosm of incipient, yet conceivable "dream match" scenarios.  Okay, maybe that's stretching it a bit.  You can't deny that the Knockouts have been one facet of the product that TNA/Impact hasn't muffed.

Looking to the singles ranks, the excitement I name-checked earlier...well, it begins to wane.  Eventually, Omega will pin Rich Swann to become the Impact World Champion.  Then what?  Where are we going?  For close to a decade now, Impact has contended with a self-imposed moratorium on building new stars.  I want to blame them, but damn.  They're still paying for the sins of Dixie Carter.  Face the facts!  It's the company you go to until.  That is, until you can wrestle for WWE or AEW.  As it relates to young talent, ROH (and even New Japan) has a stronger track record for developing fresh faces.

So who steps up to challenge The Cleaner?  I hate to say it, but I wish this angle involved WWE.  That would grab fucking eyeballs.  Since this is my wrestling column, I suppose that I'll acknowledge that other thing.  Alexa Bliss acting like a child?  Fireballs?  Randy Krueger?  Look, by the time The Undertaker started doing stupid shit in the mid-90's, he was already The Undertaker.  He was protected in such a way, that a daffy gimmick here and there wasn't going to chip away at his phantasm.  That's not the case with The Fiend, and it's definitely not the case with Bray Wyatt.  Poor guy.

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